Embattled "Mafia cop" Louis Eppolito was "more upset" by accusations that he threatened a murder witness in order to send an innocent man to jail than over his federal indictment for participating in eight mob-related assassinations, his lawyer said yesterday.
"It cut to the core, angered and frustrated him more so than anything else," attorney Bruce Cutler said of Eppolito's reaction after reading yesterday's exclusive front-page account in The Post from ex-Marine Peter Mitchell.
Mitchell, a key witness in the 1986 murder of Virginia Robertson, told The Post that Eppolito ignored his descriptions of a paunchy white-haired suspect, and instead pounded away on him that Barry Gibbs, then a scruffy 38-year-old drug user, was the killer "he wanted to get."
Eppolito went so far as to threaten Mitchell that he would plant drugs in Mitchell's mother's home and then arrest her if he did not finger Gibbs, Mitchell told The Post. "Louie was so offended, it cut to his core that he would frame someone," Cutler said. "It was just not true."
Eppolito, the son of a Mafia capo, "was more upset with this accusation" than by the laundry list of federal charges brought against him and ex-NYPD Detective Stephen Caracappa — including accusations they raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from the mob for leaking confidential NYPD information, personally killing a diamond dealer and facilitating the murders of seven other wise guys and associates.
Thanks to Murray Weiss
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